Science for evil: the scientist's dilemma

You are a scientist. You see your science being put to evil purposes, with disaster looming ahead. What do you do? This was the dilemma that confronted nuclear physicists in 1945 after the atomic bomb had been exploded over Japan. The search to understand the ultimate nature of matter, driven by intellectual curiosity and carried out in an abstruse mathematical framework, had produced the ultimate weapon of war.

Whether the development and use of these first atomic bombs was morally justified is today deeply disputed, but the problem that confronted the scientists at the end of the war was how to control the genie that had escaped from the bottle. They had produced a weapon that threatened the future of humankind. Their collective responsibility (or guilt) was unambiguous, but what should they do?

This was the genesis of the Pugwash organisation, an informal group of scientists who saw it as their responsibility to prevent the catastrophe of nuclear war in the future. From the beginning they were international, including, crucially, scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain; they were experts, in both scientific and military spheres; and they conducted their discussions out of the limelight. The aim was to bring calm academic thinking to the complex scientific, military, and political issues involved.